Carbrook Hall concerns

Like others I share concerns about Carbrook Hall becoming a drive-through coffee shop.

Yes, people would want to see it if it was in ‘a tourist hot spot’ but Sheffield and particularly its East End isn’t that.

In fact the East End is a rather depressing ‘drive through’– simply that.

Yet in many ways the Carbrook Hall issue is a self-inflicted wound. Did no one think it inappropriate that this Grade 2 listed building have skeletons painted on its outside elevation like a down- at-heel seaside ghost train or be festooned with satellite dishes?

We soon saw off that coffee container outside the bank in Church Street!

Has anyone from the city council or Historic England in recent years checked out the upstairs structural damage that I was told about by a landlord several years ago?

The truth is that Carbrook Hall slipped off the radar years ago when John Brights Regiment of Foote disbanded and left this precious 17th century survival in a vacuum.

The decline of Carbrook Hall reflects a lack of civic pride and imagination and a lost opportunity.

Ron Clayton

S6

Migraine work fears

Many of your readers will be aware of new research into public perception of migraine, which was published earlier this month.

The first joint research for our charities, The Migraine Trust, Migraine Action and the National Migraine Centre, signalled major worries over lack of support for those with migraine; a condition that affects one in seven people worldwide, for which there is currently no cure.

Almost two thirds, (64 per cent), of people quizzed believed employers don’t understand very much or at all about the nature of migraine and its effects on their staff.

Many sufferers have complained about inadequate backing from bosses, with earlier research showing that almost one in five migraine sufferers had lost a job through the condition.

And one in five, (20 per cent), even think health professionals do not realise the characteristics and impact of the condition on their patients, according to the YouGov poll.

As a result of this research, our organisations saw an unprecedented number of enquiries from those affected by migraine on issues close to their hearts, from managing distressing symptoms and effective diagnosis to overcoming the stigma of migraine at work, or in education.

We are deeply concerned about the lack of public awareness of the disabling nature of migraine, and the need for this complex condition to be taken seriously.

We will continue to campaign for better understanding and support for a condition which, sadly, millions of people know first-hand is much more than ‘just a headache.’

Simon Evans, Chief Executive, Migraine Action

Arlene Wilkie, Chief Executive, The Migraine Trust

David Bloomfield, Chief Executive, National Migraine Centre

by email

Bring a skill with you

What’s wrong with bringing immigration under control?

People should be allowed in this country but they should be the ones who have a skill to bring to these shores.

If anyone needs to look at how immigration isn’t working take a trip down to Fir Vale. I am sure many there would put you straight.

Jayne Grayson

by email

The cuckoo in the nest

Psychiatry is the cuckoo in the medical nest. Despite attempts to recruit medical students to the profession, psychiatry continues to experience the longstanding problem of how to make the profession attractive.

The media recently reported that psychiatry is launching another campaign to try and encourage medical students to take up psychiatry over concerns that recruitment had ‘flatlined.’

The new President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Prof Wendy Burn, expressed her concerns stating that without psychiatrists, ‘high-quality care’ that patients deserve could not be delivered.

It’s a contentious point. For those who have experienced the debilitating effects of psychiatric treatments, it could be said that even with psychiatrists, the high-quality care that patients deserve still wouldn’t be delivered.

It’s a profession that continues to be highlighted for the failures rather than the results.

The media is littered with tragedies following so-called treatment.

As an example, a BBC Panorama documentary broadcast in July 2017 centred on the killer James Holmes and the psychiatric treatment he received prior to the killings at a theatre in Aurora, Colorado in 2012.

Psychiatry is also a profession that has the power to forcibly treat individuals who are held in detention under the Mental Health Act.

Put the psychiatric failures and enforced nature of treatment together, and these may be some of the reasons discerning medical students choose a career path in real medicine, and avoid psychiatry.

Rather than psychiatrists, the profession is in need of some expert spin doctors. An article in 2008 in the British Journal of Psychiatry stated “…it is commonplace in the UK to hear non-psychiatrists – and frequently psychiatrists themselves – referring to psychiatrists as not being ‘proper’ doctors.”

And the current recruitment crisis is not a new one. There have been reports that those who chose medical specialities did not consider those pursuing psychiatry to be ‘real’ doctors.

Then in 2013, a study presented at the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ congress found that 26 per cent of medical students and 47 per cent of the public said they would be uncomfortable sitting next to a psychiatrist at a party.

Psychiatry is the cuckoo in the nest. Its ‘treatments’ mask the real cause of problems in life and debilitate the individual, so denying him or her the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future. Real recovery is the forte of real doctors who practice real medicine, not psychiatrists.

It’s time for psychiatry to leave the nest.

Brian Daniels

by email

Congested High Street

Is High Street in the city centre the most congested and polluted in Sheffield?

People congregating, buses piling up with drivers changing over, a conveyer of taxis, cars, vans, trams, beggars stretched out on the pavement with dog in tow.